


Cats

by tarragonthedragon



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Cats, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Mission Fic, Pre-Series, Spirits, pinch hit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 09:50:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16490345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarragonthedragon/pseuds/tarragonthedragon
Summary: Prompt: Bartimaeus and Queezle being happy. Maybe one of their adventures?





	Cats

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crabbiey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crabbiey/gifts).



 

Queezle was bright and cheerful, padding through the town on alley-cat feet, her grey streaked fur catching the light. Bartimaeus followed her, tabby gold and zig-zagging over the street to avoid the crowds. 

 

She was so young. She paused on a corner, looking back-- he caught up in a skitter and took the lead, heading right. Their target stopped on a wrought iron bench, and he curled around a lampost, glancing back. 

 

Queezle’s tawny cat eyes narrowed at him, flicking from his form to the magician. She meowed. 

 

Bartimaeus squinted his eyes in annoyance that, on feline features, read only as pleasure. 

 

Queezle meowed again. 

 

Giving in, he hissed, flicking his tail in disbelief. The magician didn’t move, watching the crowds around him. 

 

She pawed at the ground eagerly, as if to say  _ he’ll be here for hours _ . 

 

Bartimaeus flopped down on the ground with a light flump, curling in a neat spiral of cat with his gaze pinned on the magician. Queezled mewed, nosing at his tabby cat form. 

 

He was absolutely, definitely, too old to be prancing around the sunny cobbled streets. 

 

Queezle batted his ear enticingly with one paw, trotting back and forth with the perfect verisimilitude of a playful kitten. Bartimaeus swatted a paw up at her. 

 

She leaped back, tracking his tail as it swished on the ground and he rolled. 

 

Possibly, it might be the case that running about like cats would add to the illusion. It might be that the magician would be less likely to make note of them. He might only have given in because it was starting to feel as though Queezle was mocking him. 

 

Bartimaeus pounced. 

 

The two cats raced giddily over the street in circles and tangles around the bench, rolling and wrestling in the dappled sunlight of the city light. 

 

It was a good master, by most standards, not involved in the kind of politics that led to real danger. The only one they ever shared, in the end. 

 

The two cats were curled on top of each other under the bench by the time the handover took place, completely beneath suspicion after the display of frivolity. They waited for both parties to vanish before taking bird-forms, fluttering up out of sight to follow after the case. 

 

Up in the air, they could speak freely. Bartimaeus gave a dignified squawk as Queezle dove down on him. 

 

“None of this ever happened,” he insisted. One of his wings might have clipped her in the beak. 

 

“You enjoyed yourself,” she protested, rolling to avoid him as they settled on their next perch. “What’s the good in finding  _ no _ joys in this world?”

 

“Maintaining dignity.” They took off again. The shadows shifted over them in twisting tapestries as they glid under the trees, gliding on the city air spirals. They perched on a drainpipe, and Queezle nuzzled into Bartimaeus’ wing incorrigingly. 

 

He jerked the wood-pigeon’s head up with his beak at an aloof angle. “You’ll want a decent reputation one day,” he added. 

 

“Because it’s clearly so important to  _ you _ ,” she snarked, pacing in clattery little skitters on the drainpipe.

 

He mock-pecked at her. “I have an incredibly dignified history.”

 

“Of chasing your own tail?”

 

“Which you will tell noone about!”

 

They lifted off the pipe in another flutter of wings to follow the man with the case as he entered a tall redbrick building. 

 

“Well that’s spectacularly unimpressive.”

 

“Time to go warn the magician about the terrifying suburban house his manuscript is being held in.”

 

They took wing once more, sailing easily back over the city. 

 

“I just think you could stand to loosen up in ways that  _ don’t _ involve running your mouth at your master,” she went on. 

 

Bartimaeus huffed. “What else are we here for?”

 

“I can never tell if you’re serious.”

 

“Almost never.”

 

“Come on, just a little fun!” 

 

Before he could protest, she was diving, spiralling, leading him on a wild chase through the slowly-darkening sky. The city spun and danced far beneath them as they pinioned and rocketed, dancing like paired birds in the springtime as they made their meandering path back to the magicians office. Bartimaeus felt the wind rustle his wings, scooping up under Queezle to lift her out of the air, ripping a laughing shout from the pigeon’s brown form. 

 

They glided wordlessly down to the windowsill, alighting before their master to bear him news, jumping down from the window’s bare sill in human guises. Bartimaeus watched in rather uncharacteristic silence as she reported back, thinking about her view of the human’s world. 

 

She was young, and accustomed to masters as tame as their current one. Swift-moving and delighted by bright feline forms. Apparently, she liked to play chase, and unlike the rest Bartimaeus was sure he could never remember playing with other spirits on missions. She wasn’t soft, he had seen her in war, or stupid. There had to be a reason behind it, but it was beyond him. 

 

And apparently, it involved wanting to enjoy the world. She would have loved time as he had, to travel freely and without pain. 

 

They would work alongside one another, from time to time, and while she grew more experienced, she did retain a spark he saw so rarely in other spirits, with their long lives and weight of memories. He never asked her about her habits again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the shorter fic, this was a pinch hit, but I really hope it was what you were looking for!


End file.
